Good news for people who find it intimidating to walk up to a counter for tech support: in new store designs, Apple is doing away with the physical Genius Bar. Instead, they’re replacing the bar and its stools with benches where the person assisting you simply sits down next to you. [More]

When you visit the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store with a complaint about your portable iDevice, if it’s in warranty, they’ll generally hand you a new-to-you refurbished device and send you on your way. AppleInsider reported this weekend that for some basic repairs, that’s about to change. [More]

Apple’s 27″ iMac is not a cheap computer. That model currently starts at $1,800. So customers who found a smoky gray residue inside their screens were disappointed when Apple turned around and told non-smoking customers that the issues are obviously their own fault. Reader Jason, for example, was told that his screen smudged itself because it’s too humid where he lives. Does he live in the tropics? Florida, maybe? No, he lived in Ohio when his iMac troubles started. And the problem recurred after he moved to Chicago, just down the street from the city’s flagship Apple Store. [More]

Micahel’s new Macbook had a very unusual flaw. Whenever it was connected to his home network, it would take out his modem. Unfortunately, it didn’t take the whole Apple Store’s network down, so he wasn’t able to replicate the problem for the Geniuses. After five trips and a variety of repairs, Apple finally gave up…and gave him a brand new MacBook.

Apple has recalled Carla’s iMac. Specifically, the hard drive, which was made by Seagate, and has has a record of failing more than a hard drive should. Customers were told to bring their computers in so that Apple could swap the hard drive for a nice new one. Carla made her appointment as instructed, but when she got to the store, learned that the replacement hard drives were out of stock and they’d have to hold on to her computer for a week while waiting for them to restock. [More]

People consider the Apple Store experience the gold standard–or at least the brushed aluminum standard–of electronics retail. Companies from AT&T to Microsoft have tried to replicate the Apple Store experience, then refused to admit that they were trying to replicate the Apple Store experience. The backbone of the store is the Genius Bar, where Apple fans seek repairs, warranty replacements, and the wise counsel of the local council of Geniuses. What goes into the formation of a Genius? Gizmodo got hold of an Apple Store training workbook, and decided to tell the world.

Ryan writes that an Apple retail store’s Genius declared his MacBook Pro dead: the required logic board replacement would have cost more than a new computer. So Ryan moved on, and sold his old MacBook for parts. Only it turned out that the Genius misdiagnosed Ryan’s computer. The logic board was fine, and the real cause of his computer’s failure was an inexpensive-to-replace bad stick of RAM. Ryan dropped two grand on a new computer for no reason.

I guess Apple products aren’t idiot-proof after all. We have found your idiot nonpareil. There is a man in San Fran who needs help using Apple products. He is wiling to pay $200 an hour. This is his NSFW Craigsist ad/rant about how he is too busy to figure out how to get his credit card number from auto-populating when his kids buy stuff on iTunes, but has enough time for you to come over to his house and teach him how to use his devices.

Sure, we focus on stories of bad customer service here, but Gizmodo turned the shiny white counter around and solicited stories from anonymous Apple Geniuses about the worst customers they’ve ever encountered.

A man in Connecticut brought his computer to his local Apple Store for repair due to a software issue (likely a—gasp!—virus) but when he returned to pick it up, learned that the Mac Genius had reported him to the police after finding child pornography on the hard drive.

One of the blogs I’ve been following recently after my experience at the Apple ‘Genius’ bar with a smug doofus who told me I’d have to return my $2,000 laptop because he couldn’t figure out how to turn a screwdriver counterclockwise is ungenius, the chronicles of an ex-Genius detailing life behind the Bar. I haven’t linked it before now because it’s never really as incriminating as I’d like.

We’ve figured out the Apple Store Genius Bar: All the good service techs work in Ohio. That’s the conclusion we’ve reached from Daniel H. Steinberg’s heaps of praise over at O’Reilly’s Mac Dev Center.My machine initially came up registered to another user.

I ordered an iBook G4 on January 27th, 2005 – since then I’ve shipped it back four times now for various ‘fixes.’ I’m willing to admit that laptops have a higher fail-rate then desktops, which is why I’m willing to look past the first two times I had to go to an Apple store to have it sent out – once for the crashed hard drive and logic board in february, and three days after I got it back to get the logic board replaced again. I think, at least, everytime I got it back it seems they just kept replacing everything.

The Apple Store in Soho (Manhattan) is a favorite of ours, but only because we enjoy running our greasy thumbs across the once-immaculate products on display. The Genius Bar—Apple’s haughty name for their customer service desk—we avoid with extreme prejudice; We’d rather mail our faulty products back to Apple than wait in a line for hours to talk to a service tech—especially when their service can be so uneven.